“To the president’s challenge, I reply: present. As a candidate for the leadership of SYRIZA-Progressive Alliance,” Gerovasili said Saturday evening at the party congress.

At a meeting of the party’s top executive body Thursday, Kasselakis had challenge his critics within the party to either line up behind him or put up a challenger.

Gerovasili’s speech was a wholesale criticism of Kasselakis’ leadership. She accused him of being “messianic” and “arrogant” and of lacking a solid political plan. His mistakes were not merely ones of inexperience, she said.

“The role of the president is to unite. To synthesize, not to divide. To convince, not threaten. To build bridges, not walls. To embrace and not to chase away. But, above all, the president’s role is to grow the party, not to shrink it,” Gerovasili added.

A new leadership contest, just five months after the last one, is necessary to stop SYRIZA’s continuing slide and to restore the party as a potential party of government and as the main alternative to the ruling New Democracy, Gerovasili said.

Many delegates reacted angrily to Gerovasili’s challenge, forcing Kasselakis to gesture at them to stop booing.